Not Applicable
Not Applicable
Not Applicable
1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to a panel door construction and a method of making it. The invention more particularly relates to a panel door construction having a number of panels, such as six panels, which is made in an improved, cost-efficient manner.
2. Background Art
In the past, panel doors were solid doors, which had a number of panels such as six panels. Such a panel door construction is relatively expensive to manufacture, due to the expensive high grade wood serving as the raw material for the door construction. In this regard, such solid doors were traditionally made from the finest grades of lumber, and thus the materials were prohibitively expensive for many applications.
In an attempt to reduce the cost of manufacturing panel doors, fiber board and chip board materials have been employed. In this regard, the current method of making a panel door construction employs slabs or boards composed of fiber board or chip board material, which are cut into several pieces, typically including two stiles, three mullions, four cross rails and six panels to make a six panel door construction. The fifteen pieces are assembled into a stile and rail door construction by utilizing dowels and a suitable adhesive in a press.
Such a process is lengthy and time consuming. Moreover, the process is very difficult to accomplish in an accurate and precise manner. As a result, the door pieces can not be readily assembled into a flat door. Thus, the resulting door construction was not true fitting and level within its door frame.
Other attempts to make a panel door related to affixing panels to a solid core flush door. But, the resulting door did not have an authentic appearance of a conventional stile and rail panel door.
Therefore, it would be highly desirable to have a new and improved panel door construction and a method of making it in a more cost efficient and effective manner. The resulting panel door should have an authentic appearance. In this regard, such a new and improved panel door construction and method of making it would be substantially less labor intensive, since the cost of labor greatly adds to the manufacturing cost of the conventional panel door constructions. The amount of time to complete the assembly of such a door construction should be decreased as compared to conventional manufacturing techniques. Also, the resulting door should be generally flat and level. In this regard, there should be fewer component parts to reduce the risk of faulty manufacturing defects as compared to conventional manufacturing techniques employing the assembly of a large number of component parts, including a large number of expensive wood trim pieces.
Therefore, the principal object of the present invention is to provide a new and improved panel door construction and a method of making it, wherein the resulting door construction is less expensive to manufacture and results in a high quality product.
Another object of the present invention is to provide such a new and improved panel door construction and method of making it, wherein cost of making the door construction is substantially reduced, and wherein the resulting door construction is authentic in appearance of a conventional stile and rail door.
A further object of the present invention is to provide such a new and improved panel door construction and method of making it, wherein the method is less time consuming to perform.
Briefly, the above and further objects of the present invention are realized by providing a panel door construction and a method of making it, wherein making of the door construction is substantially simplified and less expensive as compared to prior known such constructions, and the resulting door construction is authentic in appearance, and is flat and level.
A panel door construction and a method of making it are disclosed, and the method relates to the provision of a generally rectangular board and cutting panel receiving openings in it. Beading strips are then secured to both faces of the board surrounding the openings, for clamping the marginal edges of a set of panels therebetween within the respective openings.